Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(84)



He turned to Uinian. “You understand this, priest?”

Uinian smiled his own smile. “Better, perhaps, than any assembled here.”

“It seems, then, that we will need a flame. This brazier,” he continued, indicating a metal grate large enough to roast a goat, “should do the job nicely.”

“No,” Uinian replied, raising his chin.

You got your ’Shael-spawned Trial by Flame, Adare thought angrily. You don’t get to pick the brazier. Blood hammered in her ears, but she kept her face still and refused to speak.

Il Tornja raised an eyebrow. “No?” Clearly he was unaccustomed to hearing the word.

“I will not be tested over some petty flame like a common criminal. I am the Chief Priest of Intarra, her officer here in this benighted world, and I will be tested in a manner and location worthy of my sacred trust.”

Adare held her breath.

“I will be tested,” Uinian continued, eyeing Adare, “in the Temple of Light.”

She was on her feet again without realizing it. “No,” she said, turning to il Tornja and the assembled ministers. “Absolutely not. This vermin has the right to due process under Annurian Law, which unfortunately includes this antiquated sideshow, but he does not dictate his terms. He has armed men in the Temple, if you don’t recall. He has practically an army!”

Uinian smiled at Adare. “A sideshow? I would make a sacred appeal to the goddess you profess to worship, and you term it a sideshow?”

“It’s a ruse,” Adare snapped. “A trick. You can’t survive the flame, and you know it.”

“Then there is no harm in allowing me the Trial,” Uinian replied. He turned to the assembled crowd, extending his arms. “All here are welcome. All who walk beneath the light of Intarra, all who see by her flames and cook by her fires, all who love beneath her lambent moon, all those who work the earth or ply the waves beneath her noonday sun. Come. Come! I have nothing to hide before my fellow men or my goddess. Watch as I allow the Flame to test me, and judge for yourselves who is pure in heart and truthful, and who is filled with deceit.”

That sealed it. With a few words, the priest had appealed above the court, above the throne itself, directly to the religious sentiments of the people. Not every citizen of Annur was a devoted follower of Intarra, of course—other gods had their temples and clergy, some quite wealthy and popular—but the people of the city were pious enough to allow the man his test. Sanlitun had been a well-liked Emperor, and many no doubt wished to see Uinian burn, but they would give him his time and place. Il Tornja could refuse, but the thing had already gone too far. For the regent to balk now would bring accusations of tyranny and impiety both, accusations the Unhewn Throne could ill afford during a delicate transition of power. The priest wasn’t offering a defense, he was making an attack, a more subtle attack than that which had killed her father, but one aimed at the heart of the entire Malkeenian line.

He knew it all along, Adare thought, sick to her stomach. I should have stabbed him in his cell as he slept. She scrambled to think of some third course, some alternative to this parade down the Godsway in the sight of all Annur. Father would have seen a way.… But her father had not seen a way. Uinian had lied to Sanlitun, tricked him, and murdered him, and now he seemed prepared to do the same to Adare. She wanted to scream, but screaming would do no good. Think, she spat at herself, but thought failed her. All she could do was follow and watch, as in a nightmare.

*

No structure in the city stood far enough from Intarra’s Spear to escape the sight of the impossible monolith, but Uinian IV’s predecessors had been shrewd enough to move the locus of religious power outside the Dawn Palace, distancing themselves from the imperial family and consolidating their hold on the ecclesiastical rule of the city. The Temple of Light, a soaring structure of stone and colored glass, stood halfway down the Godsway, close enough to the center of Annur for easy commerce with the Palace, but not so close that it fell under the shadow of those looming red walls.

Unlike the Spear, the Temple of Light was clearly a human creation, but what a creation. Tiers of arches, one above the other, climbed toward the sky, each filled with a huge window. Adare knew something of the glass trade. A single one of those panes cost more than a year’s salary for a thriving merchant—not including the price of cutting and transportation—and there were thousands of them, so many that it seemed as though the temple were more glass than stone, a massive, glittering, multifaceted gem humbling the edifices surrounding it.

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